Over the last week world headlines has been dominated by the news of the collapse of a garment factory complex in Bangladesh, leading to questions about the effectiveness of supplier audits.

Risk mitigation is something that is and will almost always be a key priority for a CPO. You only have to look at the last few months to get a sense of why that's true now, and will only become more important this year.

While the full-effects of President Obama’s re-election on CPOs and their procurement functions will become clear over the coming weeks and months, one outcome we have already seen that will have raised a few eyebrows, is a bounce in the commodity markets.

I recently watched an episode of the television programme ‘Undercover Boss’ and it made me wonder whether it might be a good idea for procurement chiefs to go undercover in their supply chains.

This week saw a slew of examples of bad press for suppliers in various industries with international governments raising concerns about Chinese telecom companies while some multinationals rejected an agreement to pay small- and medium-sized suppliers on time.

What will the next year hold and how can procurement prepare for it? Whatever the answer, procurement's response is, by default, a gloomy one.

When the results of the August Procurement Intentions survey were released, one question jumped out from the others: are we seeing the beginning of a cut back in the amount CPOs spend on technology and systems?

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that we published our Procurement Intentions Index graphs late last week. The graphs record changes in CPO strategy intentions over time, and despite being only four months in our Panel’s approaches to some areas are certainly clear.